Frailty, thy name is woman - eNotes Shakespeare Quotes Frailty, thy name is woman Hamlet: Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on, and yet, within a month— Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!— Read on Owl Eyes This eText is now on Owl Eyes. Clicking this link will open a new window. Hamlet, in his first soliloquy, recalls tender scenes between his mother, Queen Gertrude, and her deceased husband. What irks Hamlet is that, after his mother had seemed so sexually dependent on the old king, she could turn around within a month of his death and marry her brother-in-law Claudius, who, Hamlet claims, is "no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules" (lines 152–153) and compares to his father as "Hyperion to a satyr" (line 140)—as the sun-god to a deformed goat-man. To Hamlet, his mother is the archetypal woman.

Her incestuous inconstancy moves him to exclaim, "Frailty, thy name is woman!" It's not so much that Hamlet is a misogynist as that his mother's sexuality has poisoned his own, as we shall see in his relations to Ophelia [see GET THEE TO A NUNNERY ]. Hamlet Navigator: Hamlet: His Thoughts about Women is "brief." [Scene Summary] Again speaking to Ophelia as though she represents all women, Hamlet says to Ophelia, "So you mis-take your husbands" (3.2.252). She has just remarked that one of his wisecracks is "Still better, and worse," that is, more witty, with worse indecency. His comeback says that there's nothing really wrong with the joke, she has just taken it wrong, as women "mis-take" their husbands. His thought seems to be that women are supposed to take ("must take") their husbands for "better and worse," but instead they wrongly take ("mis-take") the worse husband, rather than the better, as his mother has done.

[Scene Summary] "Farewell, dear mother" (4.3.49), says Hamlet to the King. The King corrects him, "Thy loving father, Hamlet," but Hamlet explains, "father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother" (4.3.51-52). Here he is making a paradox out of something that tortures him. His mother was "one flesh" with his father, and now she is "one flesh" with his uncle, so which flesh is the "one flesh"? [Scene Summary] Talking of a skull, Hamlet says that it might have belonged to a courtier, but is "now my Lady Worm's" (5.1.88). There seems to be no particular reason for a flesh-eating maggot to be a "Lady," except that Hamlet said it that way. Later in the same scene, Hamlet says to Yorick's skull, "Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come" (5.1.193-195).

When Hamlet says "my lady," he means any woman who paints her face with cosmetics. And "favour" is "appearance," especially a good appearance. So Hamlet means that no matter how much make-up she uses, the lady will eventually be bone-white. [Scene Summary] SparkNotes: Hamlet: Important Quotations Explained Important Quotations Explained O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! O fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember?

Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,— Let me not think on’t,—Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month; or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,— O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn’d longer,—married with mine uncle, My father’s brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good; But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue. This quotation, Hamlet’s first important soliloquy, occurs in Act I, scene ii (129–158).

Hamlet speaks these lines after enduring the unpleasant scene at Claudius and Gertrude’s court, then being asked by his mother and stepfather not to return to his studies at Wittenberg but to remain in Denmark, presumably against his wishes. Here, Hamlet thinks for the first time about suicide (desiring his flesh to “melt,” and wishing that God had not made “self-slaughter” a sin), saying that the world is “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” In other words, suicide seems like a desirable alternative to life in a painful world, but Hamlet feels that the option of suicide is closed to him because it is forbidden by religion. Hamlet then goes on to describe the causes of his pain, specifically his intense disgust at his mother’s marriage to Claudius. He describes the haste of their marriage, noting that the shoes his mother wore to his father’s funeral were not worn out before her marriage to Claudius. He compares Claudius to his father (his father was “so excellent a king” while Claudius is a bestial “satyr”).

As he runs through his description of their marriage, he touches upon the important motifs of misogyny, crying, “Frailty, thy name is woman”; incest, commenting that his mother moved “[w]ith such dexterity to incestuous sheets”; and the ominous omen the marriage represents for Denmark, that “[i]t is not nor it cannot come to good.” Each of these motifs recurs throughout the play. 2. Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man; And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all,—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. This famous bit of fatherly advice is spoken by Polonius to Laertes shortly before Laertes leaves for France, in Act I, scene iii (59–80). Polonius, who is bidding Laertes farewell, gives him this list of instructions about how to behave before he sends him on his way. His advice amounts to a list of clichés. Keep your thoughts to yourself; do not act rashly; treat people with familiarity but not excessively so; hold on to old friends and be slow to trust new friends; avoid fighting but fight boldly if it is unavoidable; be a good listener; accept criticism but do not be judgmental; maintain a proper appearance; do not borrow or lend money; and be true to yourself.

This long list of quite normal fatherly advice emphasizes the regularity of Laertes’ family life compared to Hamlet’s, as well as contributing a somewhat stereotypical father-son encounter in the play’s exploration of family relationships. It seems to indicate that Polonius loves his son, though that idea is complicated later in the play when he sends Reynaldo to spy on him. 3. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. This line is spoken by Marcellus in Act I, scene iv (67), as he and Horatio debate whether or not to follow Hamlet and the ghost into the dark night. The line refers both to the idea that the ghost is an ominous omen for Denmark and to the larger theme of the connection between the moral legitimacy of a ruler and the health of the state as a whole. The ghost is a visible symptom of the rottenness of Denmark created by Claudius’s crime. 4.

I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? In these lines, Hamlet speaks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, scene ii (287–298), explaining the melancholy that has afflicted him since his father’s death.

Perhaps moved by the presence of his former university companions, Hamlet essentially engages in a rhetorical exercise, building up an elaborate and glorified picture of the earth and humanity before declaring it all merely a “quintessence of dust.” He examines the earth, the air, and the sun, and rejects them as “a sterile promontory” and “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” He then describes human beings from several perspectives, each one adding to his glorification of them. Human beings’ reason is noble, their faculties infinite, their forms and movements fast and admirable, their actions angelic, and their understanding godlike. But, to Hamlet, humankind is merely dust. This motif, an expression of his obsession with the physicality of death, recurs throughout the play, reaching its height in his speech over Yorick’s skull. Finally, it is also telling that Hamlet makes humankind more impressive in “apprehension” (meaning understanding) than in “action.” Hamlet himself is more prone to apprehension than to action, which is why he delays so long before seeking his revenge on Claudius. 5.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?—To die,—to sleep,— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die,—to sleep;— To sleep: perchance to dream:—ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?

who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. This soliloquy, probably the most famous speech in the English language, is spoken by Hamlet in Act III, scene i (58–90). His most logical and powerful examination of the theme of the moral legitimacy of suicide in an unbearably painful world, it touches on several of the other important themes of the play. Hamlet poses the problem of whether to commit suicide as a logical question: “To be, or not to be,” that is, to live or not to live. He then weighs the moral ramifications of living and dying.

Is it nobler to suffer life, “[t]he slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” passively or to actively seek to end one’s suffering? He compares death to sleep and thinks of the end to suffering, pain, and uncertainty it might bring, “[t]he heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to.” Based on this metaphor, he decides that suicide is a desirable course of action, “a consummation / Devoutly to be wished.” But, as the religious word “devoutly” signifies, there is more to the question, namely, what will happen in the afterlife. Hamlet immediately realizes as much, and he reconfigures his metaphor of sleep to include the possibility of dreaming; he says that the dreams that may come in the sleep of death are daunting, that they “must give us pause.” He then decides that the uncertainty of the afterlife, which is intimately related to the theme of the difficulty of attaining truth in a spiritually ambiguous world, is essentially what prevents all of humanity from committing suicide to end the pain of life.

He outlines a long list of the miseries of experience, ranging from lovesickness to hard work to political oppression, and asks who would choose to bear those miseries if he could bring himself peace with a knife, “[w]hen he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?” He answers himself again, saying no one would choose to live, except that “the dread of something after death” makes people submit to the suffering of their lives rather than go to another state of existence which might be even more miserable. The dread of the afterlife, Hamlet concludes, leads to excessive moral sensitivity that makes action impossible: “conscience does make cowards of us all . . . thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” In this way, this speech connects many of the play’s main themes, including the idea of suicide and death, the difficulty of knowing the truth in a spiritually ambiguous universe, and the connection between thought and action. In addition to its crucial thematic content, this speech is important for what it reveals about the quality of Hamlet’s mind. His deeply passionate nature is complemented by a relentlessly logical intellect, which works furiously to find a solution to his misery.

He has turned to religion and found it inadequate to help him either kill himself or resolve to kill Claudius. Here, he turns to a logical philosophical inquiry and finds it equally frustrating. More Help Frailty Thy Name Is Woman Frailty Thy Name Is Woman What does the line, "Frailty thy name is woman," in Act 1 of Hamlet mean and how might it foreshadow events to come? Asked on dbralexander | High School Teacher | (Level 1) Adjunct Educator Posted on December 4, 2007 at 10:52 PM In Shakespeare's plays in general, female characters in the comedies are the protagonists, the stronger, clever ones. In the tragedies, they are the weaker characters, the frail ones (there's a topic for an essay: what is Shakespeare suggesting about life in general by this conceit? Was Shakespeare the first feminist in English literature?). In Hamlet Act I, Hamlet is speaking directly about his mother whose "O'erhasty marriage" offends him to his core and causes him to think her frail, or weak in all regards. It most directly foreshadows Ophelia's betrayal of Hamlet in Act III.

"Where's your father?" \ "At home, my lord". Hamlet knows he is being watched and he confronts Ophelia. In her moment of truth, she decides to side with her father (somewhat understandable considering Hamlet's treatment of her for the previous two acts). But in Hamlet's eyes, this is just one more betrayal by one more frail woman: "Frailty, thy name is woman." Sources: Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married. Spiritually she is frail because (in Hamlet's mind, as are all these judgments) she has committed an unforgivable sin by marrying Claudius. Physically she is "frail" because she is a woman and less strong and robust than a man, though this obviously is the least of Hamlet's concerns. If you could do some research on this Renaissance idea of women, it would help you to explain Gertrude's "frailness" and round out your paper. I've included a link below to get you started.

The line about frailty might be said to foreshadow coming events because, with Hamlet's emphasis on frailty, he is proved to be himself frail by his own inability to understand the nature of the Ghost (Is it his father's true ghost or a demon sent from hell to ensnare him in evil?) and his inability to understand the role of revenge regicide (king killing; Claudius is now King) in a Protestant Prince's royal role and personal choices. These inabilities preventing coming to an understanding of complex events around him is what causes his famous inaction, hesitation, indecision. It also might be said to foreshadow the frailty shown later by Ophelia when she is dumbfounded and driven to madness by the combination of complex events around her that she is unable to understand starting with Hamlet's strange behavior and ending with Hamlet's blind-sighted murder of her father, Polonius. Sources: Hamlet - Wikiquote Hamlet How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world . The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a revenge tragedy by William Shakespeare , and is one of his most well-known and oft-quoted plays.

It is uncertain exactly when it was written, but scholars tend to place its composition between 1600 and the summer of 1602. Contents I'll speak to it though Hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace . You come most carefully upon your hour. Francisco, scene i Our sometime sister, now our Queen. Claudius, scene ii Claudius: ...But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son — Hamlet: A little more than kin, and less than kind. Claudius: How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Hamlet: Not so my lord; I am too much i' the sun. scene ii Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not "seems." Hamlet, scene ii O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew. Hamlet, scene ii Note: "Solid" is the word found in the First Folio edition of the plays (1623).

Earlier versions (the First and Second Quartos), had used the word "sallied." In some later editions, the word was "sullied." How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world. Hamlet, scene ii Frailty, thy name is woman! Hamlet, scene ii But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. Hamlet, scene ii Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Hamlet, scene ii A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Horatio, scene ii I'll speak to it though Hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. Hamlet, scene ii For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favours, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood; A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute — No more. Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.

And recks not his own rede. Ophelia, scene iii Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Polonius, scene iii Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Polonius, scene iii Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man. Polonius, scene iii Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend. Polonius, scene iii This above all — to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Polonius, scene iii But to my mind, — though I am native here And to the manner born, — it is a custom More honour'd in the breach than the observance. Hamlet, scene iv Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee, And for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself? Hamlet, scene iv Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Marcellus, scene iv My hour is almost come When I to sulphrous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. Ghost, scene v The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown. Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin. Ghost, scene v O horrible, O horrible, most horrible! Ghost, scene v And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. Ghost, scene v Variant: Most modern publications modernize this phrase to "Like quills upon the fretful porcupine." O most pernicious woman! O, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, — meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. Hamlet, scene v There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet, scene v How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself — As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on.

Hamlet, scene v The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! Hamlet, scene v Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. More matter with less art. Gertrude, scene ii. That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pity; And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure; But farewell it, for I will use no art. Polonius, scene ii Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. Hamlet, from a letter read by Polonius, scene ii Polonius: Do you know me, my lord? Hamlet: Excellent well; you're a fishmonger. Polonius: Not I, my lord. Hamlet Then I would you were so honest a man. Polonius: Honest, my lord!

Hamlet: Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Polonius: That's very true, my lord. Hamlet: [Reads] For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god kissing carrion, — Have you a daughter? Polonius: I have, my lord. Hamlet: Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive; — friend, look to 't. Polonius: [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter: — yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. scene ii Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. scene ii Polonius: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't. — Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Hamlet: Into my grave.

scene ii Polonius: My honored lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Hamlet: You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal — except my life — except my life — except my life. scene ii Hamlet: My excellent good friends! How dost thou Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both? Rosencrantz: As indifferent as children of the earth. Guildenstern: Happy in that we are not overhappy; on Fortune's cap we are not the very button. Hamlet: Nor the soles of her shoe? Rosencrantz: Neither, my lord. Hamlet: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? Guildenstern: Faith, her privates we. Hamlet: In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true! She is a strumpet. What's the news? Rosencrantz: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest. Hamlet: Then is doomsday near. scene ii There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Hamlet, scene ii I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. Hamlet, scene ii Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks. Hamlet, scene ii I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me then a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.

Hamlet, scene ii Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Hamlet, scene ii O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Hamlet, scene ii What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? Hamlet, scene ii That I, the son of a dear father murdered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must like a whore unpack my heart with words, and fall a-cursing like a very drab Hamlet, scene ii The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, As he is very potent with such spirits, Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds More relative than this: the play 's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet, scene ii Be all my sins remembered. Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?

We are oft to blame in this, — 'Tis too much prov'd, — that with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do sugar o'er The devil himself. To be, or not to be, — that is the question: — Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, — No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, — 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd.

To die, to sleep; — To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, — The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, — puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Hamlet, scene i The fair Ophelia! — Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd. Hamlet, scene i Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Hamlet, scene i Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. Ophelia, scene i I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, — all but one, — shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.

Hamlet, scene i O! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! Ophelia, scene i To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! Ophelia, scene i Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. Claudius, scene i Gertrude: Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me. Hamlet: No, good mother, here's metal more attractive. [Hamlet takes a place near Ophelia.] scene ii Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? scene ii So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. Oh heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year. Hamlet, scene ii The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Gertrude, scene ii Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me.

You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me. Hamlet, scene ii Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale. Polonius: Very like a whale. scene ii Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business, as the day Would quake to look on.

Hamlet, scene ii Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her, but use none. Hamlet, scene ii O! my offence is rank, it smells to heaven. Claudius, scene iii What if this cursed hand Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, — Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens To wash it white as snow? Claudius, scene iii Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I'll do 't: and so he goes to heaven; And so am I reveng'd. Hamlet, scene iii My words fly up, my thoughts remain below; Words without thoughts never to heaven go. Claudius, scene iii Hamlet: How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! Polonius: Oh, I am slain! scene iv Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better. Hamlet, scene iv In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty. I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

Hamlet, scene iv Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me. Gertrude, scene iv Good-night, ladies; good-night, sweet ladies; good-night, good-night. So, haply, slander — Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, As level as the cannon to his blank, Transports his poisoned shot — may miss our name And hit the woundless air. — O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay. Claudius, scene i Rosencrantz: I understand you not, my lord. Hamlet: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. Rosencrantz: My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. Hamlet: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing — Guildenstern: A thing, my lord? Hamlet: Of nothing. scene ii Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

Claudius: What dost thou mean by this? Hamlet: Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar. scene iii Claudius: Where is Polonius? Hamlet: In heaven; send thither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby. scene iii How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! Hamlet, scene iv O! from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! Hamlet, scene iv We know what we are, but know not what we may be. Ophelia, scene v Good-night, ladies; good-night, sweet ladies; good-night, good-night. Ophelia, scene v When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. I'm lost in it, my lord.

But let him come; It warms the very sickness in my heart, That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, 'Thus diest thou.' Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears. Laertes, scene vii What is the reason that you use me thus? I lov'd you ever: but it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. Hamlet, scene i There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will. Hamlet, scene ii We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Hamlet, scene ii The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: I cannot live to hear the news from England; But I do prophesy the election lights On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited.

The rest is silence. Hamlet, scene ii; variant, from the First Folio: The rest is silence. O, o, o, o. [Dies] If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Horatio, scene ii Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage. Fortinbras, scene ii Go, bid the soldiers shoot. Fortinbras, scene ii No Fear Shakespeare: Hamlet: Act 1, Scene 2, Page 6 No Fear Shakespeare Home → No Fear Shakespeare → Hamlet → Act 1, Scene 2, Page 6 Hamlet That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.—Heaven and earth, Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on, and yet, within a month— Let me not think on ’t.

Frailty, thy name is woman!— A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor father’s body, Like Niobe, all tears. Why she, even she— O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle, My father’s brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules. Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes, She married. O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not nor it cannot come to good, But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue. Oh God, do I have to remember that? She would hang on to him, and the more she was with him the more she wanted to be with him; she couldn’t get enough of him. Yet even so, within a month of my father’s death (I don’t even want to think about it. Oh women!

You are so weak!), even before she had broken in the shoes she wore to his funeral, crying like crazy—even an animal would have mourned its mate longer than she did!—there she was marrying my uncle, my father’s brother, who’s about as much like my father as I’m like Hercules. Less than a month after my father’s death, even before the tears on her cheeks had dried, she remarried. Oh, so quick to jump into a bed of incest! That’s not good, and no good can come of it either. But my heart must break in silence, since I can’t mention my feelings aloud. Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BARNARDO HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BARNARDO enter. 160 Women In Hamlet That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Laertes expects Ophelia to heed his counsel that 'best safety lies in fear.' Her whole education is geared to relying on other people's judgment, and to placing chastity and reputation for chastity above even the virtue of truthfulness.

Ophelia has no chance to develop an independent conscience of her own, so stifled is she by the authority of the male world. - Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, Macmillan, London, 1975. p.94. In an effort to conceive of Ophelia as a character with her own richness and integrity, interpreters of the role have often felt obliged to ascribe a past to her which is not evident from the text of Shakespeare's Hamlet itself. This was particularly true of Victorian interpretations which represented a period of great fascination with Ophelia. Like many critics, the Victorians went to the extant sources of the Hamlet story which were the probable progenitors of the Shakespeare version -- to Saxo Grammaticus' Historia Danica (printed 1514) and to François de Bellforest's The Hystorie of Hamblet (1576). Employing a mixture of these texts and imagination, they came up with their own portraits of Ophelia - including a past. Ophelia -- poor Ophelia!

Oh, far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life! What shall be said of her? for eloquence is mute before her! Like a strain of sad, sweet music, which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence... The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her... - Anna Brownell Murphy Jameson, Shakespeare's Heroines:Characteristics of Women (1889), AMS Press, New York, 1967. pp. 154-5. The situation of Ophelia in the story is that of a young girl who, at an early age is brought from a life of privacy into the circle of a court -- a court such as we read of in those early times, at once rude, magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person of the queen, and is apparently her favourite attendant.

The affection of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature is one of those beautiful and redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only is Shakespeare. - Jameson. pp. 155-6. Starting with the Romantics, it was popular to mix the childhood of Shakespeare's characters with your own childhood. We can see this tendency, for example with the portrait of Ophelia created by Helena Faucit Martin. Ophelia was one of the pet dreams of my girlhood - partly, perhaps, from the mystery of her madness. - Helena Faucit Martin, Shakespeare's Female Characters, Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1888. p.4. -- It hurts me to hear her spoke of, as she often is, as a weak creature, wanting in truthfulness, in purpose, in force of character, and only interesting when she loses the little wits she had. And yet who can wonder that a character so delicately outlined, and shaded in with touches so fine, should be often gravely misunderstood? - Helena Faucit Martin. p.3.

Helena Faucit Martin, who played Ophelia against William Charles Macready's Hamlet in Paris, goes further in imagining a childhood for Ophelia. This imagined experience serves as a background for actually creating the part herself. "I had lived again and again through the whole childhood and lives of many of Shakespeare's heroines, long before it was my happy privilege to impersonate and make them, in my fashion, my own." (p.6) Here's the account of Ophelia's childhood that emerges from this process. I pictured Ophelia to myself as the motherless child of an elderly Polonius. His young wife had first given him a son, Laertes, and had died a few years later, after giving birth to the poor little Ophelia. The son takes much after his father, and, his student-life over, seeks his pleasures in the gayer life of France; fond of his little sister in a patronizing way, in their rare meetings, but neither understanding nor caring to understand her nature.

The baby Ophelia was left, as I fancy, to the kindly but thoroughly unsympathetic tending of country-folk, who knew little of "inland nurture." Think of her, - sweet, fond, sensitive, tender-hearted, the offspring of a delicate dead mother tended only by roughly-mannered and uncultured natures! One can see the sweet child, with no playmates of her kind, wandering by the streams, plucking flowers, making wreathes and coronals, learning the names of all the wild flowers in glade and dingle, having many favourites, listening with eager ears when amused or lulled to sleep at night by the country songs, whose words (in true country fashion, not too refined) come back again vividly to her memory, with the fitting melodies, as such things strangely but surely do, only when her wits have flown... When we first see her, we may fairly suppose that she has been only a few months at court. It has taken off none of the bloom of her beautiful nature. That remains pure and fresh and simple as she brought it from her country home. One change has taken place, and this a great one.

Her heart has been touched, and has found its ideal in the one man about the court who was likely to reach it, both from his rare and attractive qualities, and a certain loneliness in his position not very unlike her own. How could she help feeling flattered - drawn towards this romantic, desolate Hamlet, the observed of all observers, whose "music vows" have been early whispered in her ears? On the other hand, what sweet repose it must have been to the tired, moody scholar, soldier, prince, dissatisfied with the world and all its ways, to open his heart to her, and to hear the shy yet eloquent talk which he would woo from her - to watch the look, manner, and movements of this graceful child of nature ... - Helena Faucit Martin, Shakespeare's Female Characters, Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1888. p.7-9.

Question: 'Frailty thy name is woman' is a quotation from which of Shakespeare's plays?
Answer: Hamlet